Economics

Sea disasters

Women and children first?

THE Titanic disaster has lost nothing of its horrifying appeal, even as we approach its 100th anniversary on April 15. The television is brimming with documentaries, there is the inevitable rebroadcast of James Cameron's famous 1997 film (a new, IMAX 3D version of which is now in theatres), and gift shops are busy coming up with new and occasionally macabre gimmicks.

Economists are interested, too. Survival on board the Titanic is famous for its gender bias: roughly three out of four women survived, and almost half of the children, but only around 20% of men and crew. Social norms, an important building block of an economy, seem to hold up even in the most extreme of circumstances. Or should we say British norms? The recent Costa Concordia disaster off the coast of Italy, in which the captain abandoned his sinking ship, led to discussions of British chivalry at sea.

A new and timely paper from Sweden tries to shed some further light on the issue. Mikael Elinder and Oscar Erixson of Uppsala University have looked at 18 peace-time shipwrecks for which they could find detailed data. The results are striking. Women had a lower chance of survival in 11 out of 18 instances. Only on two ships was it an advantage to be a woman: on the Birkenhead in 1852 and on the Titanic. The best odds of survival on average were, somewhat surprisingly, those of the crew, followed by none other than the captain. Children were worst off (see the chart below, in which MS is the sample of the 16 ships other than the much-studied Titanic and Lusitania).

Is the Titanic therefore just an exception to the rule? Or are there other factors that can explain the difference in survival outcomes? Several possibilities come to mind: whether the ship sank fast, whether it was before or after the First World War, whether the captain gave the order that women and children are to be evacuated first—and whether the ship was British. The researchers tested all these different explanations.

The amount of time for evacuation does not seems to matter for women's survival, contrary to what the comparison between the Titanic (slow) and Lusitania (fast) suggests. On post-World War shipwrecks, women's odds are somewhat higher.

What does seem to matter, however, is the behaviour of the captain. If he orders that women and children are to be evacuated first, their odds improve considerably. And as we know from eye-witnesses (and the film), such orders were not only given, but also somewhat brutally enforced on board the Titanic. Finally, the results are bad news for notions of British chivalry: surprisingly, women fared worse on ships under British command, not better.

The authors are careful not to overstate their conclusions. After all, they (luckily) had only 18 cases to study. But such a descriptive analysis reminds us to be cautious. Social norms may hold up—if a combination of other factors supports them. But depending on the circumstances, the dynamics of the situation might go either way. One example, almost trivial in comparison, is littering and the broken window theory: if we observe others breaking social norms and rules, we are more likely to do so ourselves. Maybe it is the role of an enforcer to steer the dynamics in a favourable direction. One such example might have been the captain on the Titanic.

The "Wilhelm Gustloff" sank in the icy Baltic Sea on January 30th, 1945, after being torpedoed by the Russians.

The ship was greatly overloaded with about 10,000 people. 6000 tickets had been sold but since this was the only ship that ever left the Gdansk harbor before the Russians came, panicked masses had stormed the gangway. The exact number of people on the ship will never be known.

9000 people died at sea that night. 4000 of them were children. Many children had been provided with a life ring. But in small children the head is heavier than the body. Survivors described the haunting picture of so many little feet sticking up in the air, whereas the heads were underwater.

The "Wilhelm Gustloff" was the shipwreck with the most lost lives in marine history. We hear so little about it because the Germans did not want to own that they had sneaked 1500 troupes on a Red Cross vessel, and the Russians could not admit that they had torpedoed a ship under the Red Cross flag.

The vessel had been built as a cruise liner and was supposed to carry Hitler's name. When David Frankfurter shot the Swiss Nazi leader who had espoused the Nazi brand of antisemitism, the ship was named after the "martyr" Wilhelm Gustloff.

I know about the disaster because my mother had bought tickets for the "Wilhelm Gustloff". But she remembered in time that she was prone to extreme seasickness. She bartered the tickets, preferring to walk on foot - pushing my stroller. It took her three months to reach Hamburg. I could have been one of the babies swimming head-down in the Baltic sea.

Comparatively, far more men and crew survived than did women and children. By chance, that night three captains (former and present) of the ship were on board. All three survived!

Chivalry is all very fine & noble. But it takes on a sinister shade when it is taken for granted or even demanded by the (un)fairer sex. Male genorosity is a gift that should be appreciated, not a gender-right of the female. Women need to remember that, especially the self-absorbed, narcissistic divas!

Follow me Nirvana-bound and we'll make a break for the lifeboats. You knock down any of those narcissistic divas who get in our way, while I work the winch. We got here first ladies, even if we had to throw a few elbows! "ooh, ooh, take us with you, don't leave me and my children here to drown". How self absorbed!

I don't quite agree. A 3 to 1 survival ratio in First Class indicates that the power of social convention held pretty strongly there as well - less than in Second Class, true, but... it still means something like 67% of First Class men gave up their spot. That's still a pretty powerful social convention.

If you travel on British ships, enjoy the courteous service, on time clockwork schedules, and wear your life preserver when sleeping...but don't eat the cooking unless you like boiled, overcooked bland food.

What the study points up is something that scientists have known for years: it's silly to form conclusions based on a single data point. The Titanic might have been an example of certain behavior. But forming general conclusions about "women and children first" on that basis was foolish -- and would have been foolish, even if subsequent studies had supported the conclusion.

"Women and children first" was a noble social norm in a world where it was important for your nation's population to grow. (The rate at which a population grows depends on the number of fertile women; and of course a lifeboat fits three children in the space needed by one adult). Today, I think it should be replaced by the norm of keeping families together - live together or die together.

Nirvana-bound, your nickname is a misnomoer. With that attitude (male "generosity" is not a gift, it is simple justice, in a world where your muscles and your social status give you an unfair advantage) you would definitely not be bound for Nirvana!

Interesting result. The "Birkinhead Drill" of "women and children first" - with its origins in the British Empire of the 19th Century - is now (certainly in the 21st Century) considered an international protocol. However it is almost certainly the responsibility of the crew to remind passengers of this. I refer to the sinking of the Oceanos and the (jinxed) Achille Lauro - both of which brought the conduct of the Captain and crew into question, yet casualies were light. Finally, a sample of just 18 incidents is ludicrously insufficient to indict centuries of British maritime history. I'd be interested to see the results of a proper academic survey based on the widely accepted formula of deaths per passenger kilometre.

I find this relevant both as a leadership study (the captain orders matter to whether women and children would be saved first) and to the "warrior attitude" debate (going on in the US Army now). It is certainly NOT "warrior attitude" to use men's superior strength to get to life boats first. I would have thought that women fared better pre-world wars and worse post, because the carnage of the wars destroyed the "martial virtue" attitudes in Europe (and Vietnam and Afghanistan seem to do something similar in the US today)

The behaviours of men and women by class may be quantified as follows.

First, we get rid of the servants, and combine the women and children into one set.

The figures then are:

First

159 men (55 survived)
124 w+c (119 survived)
283 total (174 survived)

Second

148 men (13 survived)
116 w+c (103 survived)
264 total (116 survived)

Third

440 men (59 survived)
259 w+c (113 survived)
699 total (172 survived)

Now we look at First Class only and imagine that we selected at random 174 people (the survivors) out of 283. How many would we expect to be men, and how many would we expect to be women and children? We would expect:

174/283 * 159 = 98 men

174/283 * 124 = 76 women and children

In fact, in First Class the survival rates were 55 and 119. Thus we see that, in First Class, women and children were indeed saved at a rate higher than random selection would predict.

We can make the calculation more sophisticated by hypothesising a “gender relative pushiness factor” for men and women/children – GRPmn and GRPwn respectively.

Then we might hypothesise the First Class survival rates to be:

for men: 174/283 *159 * GRPm1

for women and children 174/283 *124 * GRPw1.

By equating these to the actual survival rates in each case we can calculate GRPm1 and GRPw1. For example, for First Class men:

174/283 *159 * GRPm1 = 55

Solving, we get GRPm1 = 0.563

Now we can calculate the gender relative pushiness factor of men and women in each of the three classes. The results are:

First

GRPm1 = 0.563
GRPw1 = 1.561

Second

GRPm2 = 0.200
GRPw2 = 2.021

Third

GRPm3 = 0.545
GRPw3 = 1.773

In summary, based on this calculation, First Class men were the most relatively pushy, but only slightly more than Third Class men.

The real outliers are the Second Class men. As commenter bampbs and others have noted, that is where the middle class morality really shows up.

You are wrong. Read some official documents and believe less to media. Schettino left the ship after 4000 persons because he was forced (he was in the left side of the ship when it was capsizing). 200- 300 persons remained on board.As for the evacuation, wait the results of the black box analysis.